


The Super Objective

by interabang



Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-09
Updated: 2010-09-09
Packaged: 2018-03-18 18:49:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3580125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interabang/pseuds/interabang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Rachel flies to Paris, Ross turns to another friend for comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Super Objective

Ross opened the door to his apartment. His empty, cavernous apartment.

He tossed his keys down – no, that was an exaggeration; it was more like he let his keys slip out of his lifeless hand – and checked his answering machine, but it wasn’t blinking.

Part of him thought it would. Part of him still had wild fantasies chasing each other in his head about Rachel changing her mind, of her banging on the door between the plane and the airport so she could rush right back into Ross’s welcoming embrace. Part of him had hoped that, somehow, Rachel would be waiting for him in his apartment, her suitcase resting against the couch and her lovely face lighting up when she'd see him.

But this wasn’t the movies. Maybe things with her had felt that way, once upon a time, but not anymore.

And, for the first time in his life, Ross realized he would have to start making his peace with that.

 

 

 

Joey and Phoebe were the only ones in the group that Ross saw in Central Perk lately. It felt surreal, at first, for there to be three empty spots on the seats in ‘their’ area. _Four_ , Ross thought with a small, sad smile, because he’d started to count Mike as a member of the gang before he kept taking off for some piano-related gig.

Then, a few weeks after Rachel had flown to Paris, Phoebe started to go to more and more of Mike’s gigs as well. They still acted like they were attached to the hip.

Which left Ross and Joey sitting alone on the long couch together most days. Or Ross would sit on the far left end of the couch and Joey at his regular seat at the small table near the counter.

Joey kept making jokes about waiting for the others to come by, wondering where they were. His wide grins and happy-go-lucky demeanor always made Ross feel a little better, made him consider the bigger, brighter picture of things. Joey's smiles helped Ross forget, for longer periods of time, that Rachel was really gone, and wasn't coming back to him.

He tried to imagine what it would’ve been like if he were constantly hanging out by himself all the time in the coffee house, or if, for some reason, he'd have been stuck with just Mike.

_...Yeah._

Ross realized that in the grand scheme of things, life could always be worse.

 

 

 

Then, one day, Joey invited Ross back to his place so they could watch _Die Hard_. They both shouted the movie title at the top of their lungs and raced upstairs like little kids to slam the DVD in, and Joey settled down his large black chair while Ross pulled up a stool next to him.

It was fun. More fun than Ross had had since Rachel, Mon, and Chandler moved away. More fun than Ross had had in a couple months, actually. He’d missed this, laughing and forgetting about his troubles and what he missed whenever he let himself back into his apartment across the street.

When the movie ended and Ross got up to leave, Joey threw a certain, furtive look at him. Ross didn’t have to ask what the look was for; he’d remembered all too well what had transpired the last time they watched _Die Hard_ together. He’d remembered, all too well, just how simultaneously weird and wonderful their first nap had been, and how Joey couldn’t hide the fact that he wanted to do it again.

“Night, Joe,” Ross said with a polite nod, and as he left, he could hear Joey sighing.

 

 

 

Later, while Ross was lying in his too-big bed, he couldn't stop tossing and turning.

In a way, he wasn't surprised at all about it.  He should've known that he’d wind up back here, back to thinking, “Well... it wouldn’t be _that_ bad if we did it again.” None of the others would barge in on them, and Ross was almost certain that all the awkward stuff that had gone on between Joey, Rachel, and himself was water under the bridge. Otherwise, Joey wouldn’t have looked at him the way he did earlier that night.

Right?

It only took two rings for Joey to pick up his phone.

“Knew you were up for it,” he said in that sly, rumbling tone of his that Ross heard him use on countless women, that made him _shiver_ this time, for some reason. “I could see it in your eyes.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Ross said, standing right outside Joey's front door.

 

 

 

Things began to progress at a shockingly rapid speed after that.

Shockingly, or strangely amazing -  Ross couldn’t really tell the difference. It was like one of those flipbooks he used to be so awed by as a kid, the pages flickering in one smooth arc to reveal a shifting, animated image.

An evolving image.

'Weird' slowly turned into 'nice,' which turned into the best sleep Ross Geller had in what felt like years, which turned into, “Dude, are we _spooning_?”, which turned into a two-person Margarita party that somehow led to a few fumbling kisses, which turned into, “Uh, we did _not_ just do that,” which turned into them doing more stuff they both did _not_ just do, which somehow segued into, “So, how the hell are we gonna do this?”, which turned into something that actually felt pretty damn good, which turned into something that Ross had never, ever in his wildest dreams, imagined would happen.

“Oh my God, I’m sleeping with _Joey_ ,” Ross announced to the ceiling, as though confirming it out loud would surely snap him awake, but it didn’t.

“That a problem?” he heard from the other side of the bed.

Ross cleared his throat and said, “No.”

“Okay, then.” Joey said, sounding like he was smiling, but then he grumbled, “Now keep it down. I got an early day on the set tomorrow.”

 _I’m sleeping with Joey_ , Ross thought as he rolled over onto his side, watching his best friend slip back into unconsciousness, and suddenly, like a bright, shining moment in a series of bright shining moments that had a habit of ending up in something bleak and messy for Ross, he realized that he didn’t mind the concept as much as he thought he would.

In fact, he didn’t mind it at all.

 

 

 

There was something kind of funny about them being together, especially during sex. In the way that Joey was all rough, round curves in the places where Rachel was nearly all smooth, creamy skin. In the way that where, instead of there being long, soft, coconuty hair, there was short, black, un-coconuty hair, which Ross would grip onto tightly as he moaned, coming right into Joey’s hand.

It was funny how Joey seemed to know, right from the beginning, almost _exactly_ how to get Ross off in just the right amount of time, whereas there had been this brief, awkward period between Ross and Rachel in the beginning of their relationship, back when Ross felt like he was on edge all the time, or constantly moping about something or other - Rachel being the 'something or other' - rather than letting things go at their own pace.

There was something funny in the way that he and Joey both felt comfortable about talking dirty some nights, and then how they grinned at each other in the afterglow, complimenting each other on how good they were, especially how far Ross had come.

It was funny, in a way, how Ross still missed Rachel, and how he knew Joey still missed her too.

And then, when they both began to miss being apart from each other more than they missed being apart from her, it wasn't funny at all.

 

 

 

The only problem, it seemed, was hiding their relationship from the others. It made Ross realize just how difficult and frustrating it was for Monica and Chandler when they'd started dating.

Phoebe would come bursting into Central Perk while Ross sat on the long couch right next to Joey, and they’d have to break apart and act all cool, like they hadn’t just been surreptitiously rubbing ankles or running their fingers along each other’s thighs.

She constantly asked them if they were seeing anybody, and they were both ready with separate lies, making up streams of women they’d been dating since Rachel left. In bed, at night, they had fun coming up with back stories for their dates: Ross had been involved with a former astronaut, a botanist, and someone new in his paleontology department, while Joey was juggling a professional skier, a runner-up in last year's Miss New York pageant, a woman who looked just like Amy Adams, and - just for the hell of it - a latex enthusiast.

“Uh, don’t tell me you’re into _that_ ,” Ross had said, half-jokingly, when he heard about the last woman, wrinkling his nose. Joey shrugged and said, “Guess we won’t ever be trying it out anytime soon, huh?”

“Wait, you... you’ve really used it before?” Ross asked, wide-eyed, and Joey chuckled, saying, “ _So_ much you still don't know about me, Ross.”

 

 

 

And suddenly it had been nine months since Rachel had moved, and Ross couldn’t quite recall the last time he’d made an utter ass out of himself. He furrowed his brow at his reflection in the bathroom down the hall from his office, trying to remember whether he fucked up his spray-on tan before or after he'd run around desperately trying to get Rachel back her job at Ralph Lauren.

Oh, sure, Ross still slipped up here and there. But not enough for him to want to crawl back to his apartment and die a slow, brooding death. Nope, it was like he was a new man now.

When Ross walked out of the bathroom, he passed by Charlie, of course, and caught her trying - and failing - to hide a smirk behind her hand.

Ross looked down and saw the bottom of his dress shirt sticking out through the zipper gap in his pants.

His face flushed immediately, but then he remembered that one godawful night he had to walk home carrying his leather pants. So he decided that it would be better to just laugh off the whole thing with Charlie and pretend he still cared about what she thought.

 

 

 

To his surprise, Ross wasn’t getting that stifling, anxious sense of concern, of wondering where things between him and Joey were going, if anywhere at all. It was kind of like how things with Mona had been, but instead of bringing the issue up like she did, Joey didn’t say anything about it, and Ross didn’t ask Joey about it, and they were both fine with that.

Not FAJITAS Fine, the actual definition of the word.

Ross also knew, he just _knew_ , that Joey wasn’t checking out women as much as he used to, and even then, it was kind of half-assed. Whenever Ross noticed Joey not staring at some hot blonde and registering a sudden swell of affection, he felt almost like he was living in a kind of dream world, in which anything seemed possible. A world in which he didn’t have to worry so damn much about being in a new relationship –  which was incredibly ironic, because, hello, this was _Joey_ – and didn’t have to obsess over the possibility of his significant other slipping out of his hands and running into someone else’s.

Then again, it had always been like that with Joey. From the very first night they met, Ross had almost always felt a little more relaxed, more mellow, and like he didn’t have to try so hard at looking all smart and mature when it was just him and Joey hanging out together.  Okay, so once in a while factoids and historical dates would slip out, but Joey showed a little more tolerance for Ross's ramblings, and Ross figured out when to stop.

He also figured out - aside from one other impressive reason - why half the women in New York City were so attracted to Joey. They could all probably sense that feeling of complete ease, that rare unspoken promise of experiencing complete sexual and mental freedom with him. But unfortunately for them, Joey Tribbiani was finally and completely in an exclusive, long-term relationship.

Ross discovered he liked thinking that.

He liked thinking about that a _lot_.

 

 

 

Exactly ten months after Ross and Joey's first hookup, Chandler and Monica finally came back to the Village for a surprise visit with the twins, and Chandler had to use Joey’s bathroom.

“Hey, Joe, why do you have so much of that... uh, _stuff_ in there?” he asked in a failed attempt to sound casual as he came back out into the living room.

“What stuff?” Monica asked distractedly, fiddling with the buttons on Erica’s teeny tiny shirt.

Ross caught Joey’s eyes widening from across the room, and he cursed himself for forgetting to hide the scattered bottles of lube and condom packets laying on the bar above the sink.  Not to mention his razor, toothbrush, and bottle of moisturizer that everyone in the gang knew was Ross's brand of choice.

Ross’s ears immediately began to burn. He started coughing violently, and after he managed to recover, he knew that it was too late. He knew that they’d been caught.

Joey just groaned and flopped down on the big black chair, rubbing his lids with his fingers.

“You...” Chandler spluttered, his head whipping back and forth between Ross and Joey like he was watching a very fast-paced tennis match. “You... and you...”

“Well,” Monica said, sounding eerily calm. “I can’t say I ever saw _this_ coming.”

And that was pretty much the end of that.

 

 

 

Except it wasn't.

Once Chandler got over his strange, tongue-stuck-in-his-throat period around Ross and Joey, he started cracking jokes with such enthusiasm that Ross considered announcing that he and Joey were over, if only to make Chandler shut the hell up and stop texting Ross with several 'boning' jokes per day. Not to mention his occasional calls to Joey saying stuff like, "I thought what we had was _special_ , man," while pretending to cry.

Phoebe, on the other hand, faked her surprise at the news for a minute or so before admitting she'd known for months.

“You pulled off your little date stories fairly well,” she told Ross when they were in Central Perk together. Ross and Joey sat on opposite ends of the couch, their legs both shaking a mile a minute. “But Joey’s _awful_ at lying, remember? I could see right through him.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” Joey asked.

“Eh, I was having too much fun watching you squirm,” Phoebe said with a devious grin. “So anyway, I figured you either swore off sex altogether, or you were doing some guy, and, well...” She winked at Ross. “You know Joey.”

“Yeah,” Ross said, inching closer to Joe on the couch, his lips curving up into a grin. “I do.”

“Ooh, ‘I do.’ Interesting choice of words,” Phoebe said as her eyes lit up. “Is that where this is —”

“— _No_ ,” Ross and Joey said.

 

 

Suddenly, it seemed like pretty much everybody knew about them. Treeger knew, Charlie knew, and Mrs. Braverman knew.  Even  _Gunther_  knew, which explained why Ross’s coffee was surprisingly good lately – “Huh. Tastes like mine always does,” Phoebe said right after she tried it and right before she wrote Ross off as paranoid – and why Joey had been ‘accidentally’ given a free chocolate chip muffin with his orders about once every other week.  
  
The only people they kept things under wraps from were their parents and Rachel. Joey didn’t even want to think about what his father would say, and Ross wasn’t willing to break the news to Judy, even though she was getting increasingly suspicious about getting Ross’s answering machine when she called him every night, while he was most likely screwing Joey senseless - or vice versa - in the apartment across the street.  
  
They’d tell their parents, eventually. If things kept going well, they’d tell everyone, even Rachel.  
  
One day, they’d tell her. 

 

 

 

“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?” Rachel asked Ross the day after she got off the plane. They were sitting on a park bench as they watched Joey help Emma dig a hole in the sandbox.

“ _Wha-huh_?” Ross said, whipping his head around to face her, then laughing his humorless laugh. “What're you - boy they, uh, must have had some extra pressure in your cabin, Rach.”

“Ross,” Rachel said, putting her hand on his arm and smiling. “You don't have to pretend. It’s all over your faces.”

After a long moment of silence, Ross heaved a sigh of release. “What? A tattoo saying, ‘We're doing each other?’”

“Oh, you know what I mean. It's the way you look at each other when you don't think anyone else is looking at you two, how you smiled in our video chats whenever you said his name, how he packed sunscreen without you telling him to, how you reached out to grab his hand, then played it off in the most _obvious_ way possible on the way over here...” Rachel shrugged as she trailed off, then waved at Emma.

Ross didn't know how to respond to that. 

Rachel giggled slightly when she noticed his stunned look. “It’s okay, really,” she said. “I think it’s sweet.”

The corner of Ross's mouth turned up a little. “You – you do?”

“Yeah. Actually, I think this is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Y'know, I felt so bad about leaving, and I was worried I had sort of, um... broken you and Joey.” Rachel looked down and tucked her hair behind one ear, the way she used to while apologizing to Ross. When she looked up at him, she was smiling again. “But I see you two, and I see it. It's how we used to look.”

“How?” Ross asked, struggling to remember the same days he had clung onto for so long.

“ _Happy_. And seeing the both of you look like that makes me happy, too.” Rachel patted his leg and got up to join Joey and Emma, then paused, turning to look at Ross. She added, under her breath, “So try to make this last, okay?”

Rachel walked off and Ross spent a minute or two observing the scene before him: Rachel was ignoring her chic hairstyle and cutting edge outfit to shovel sand into a bucket; Joey, a rich soap star, was gathering twigs; and little Emma - looking as sweet and precious as she always did - was doling out sandcastle-building instructions.

“Yeah,” Ross said quietly, to himself, before getting up to join them. “Yeah, I think I will.”

 

 

 

Later, when Ross kissed Joey in front of their grinning group of friends, Joey said, “Finally!” and kissed Ross back with so much enthusiasm, he thought he might die from feeling so much joy.


End file.
